If you think that is demeaning, well... nah. I shouldn't say anything, lest I perforate your incredibly thin skin...

(That's me actually being demeaning, in case you were wondering)

In the future, simply back somebody up without also uselessly accusing somebody else of something that they weren't being. You know, because that could also be construed as demeaning.

Preach.

Anyways

The mass driver is like the sniper and the hmg. Used to scare and point defense. Isn't it intimidating when you see a md spamming an area? That's what it's for. Unfortunately people abuse them with myofibs.

There should be 5 seconds of bleed out time then an immediate revive time. Unless you press x to be revived.

Stomping can only be solved by tiers.

Before I even read the rest of this paragraph, I smiled.



I appreciate that it's frustrating when you're ready to revive someone and they don't call for a revive... But I would pin this more on awkwardness of informing players of this fact rather than the non-revivability under fire. If it were made absolutely clear to even the thickest of people that you need to PUSH X TO GET REVIVED and that you should do so, I think more people would. 'Call for help', surprisingly, isn't always recognised as necessary by newbies. I've mentored several people who were unaware of this and I had to explain to them over comms that they needed to press x to be revived.

Previously there were problems with revive abuse - people would endlessly revive people under fire in a frustrating manner, for instance. In some scenarios people would be 'farmed', where two players would co-operate to shoot the victim, have them revived (by a friend on the other team) and then repeat to get many easy kills. This had the frustrating side-effect of counting as a death for the player each time it happened to them.

An obvious solution and one that's been asked for since forever is to only have deaths count on bleedout. It's a minor thing, but it does have an effect on the psychology of the situation.

Perhaps a superior solution would be to allow players to 'accept' revives. They wouldn't need to call for help to be revived - allowing logis to needle them and get their WP - but they'd need to push a button to get up once that happens. There are a couple of minor problems with that solution, but I think it would be better than the current system.



This is the one thing I lament about DUST the most.

Rooftop camping, MD hopping, blatant team mismatches... It's so easy to simply break the game in a way that isn't really fulfilling. It isn't a challenge when you're running a full proto squad and slaughtering your way through newbies. It isn't a challenge when you sit on a rooftop filled with uplinks and triage hives and camp there all match. And it certainly isn't a challenge to do both of these things at once.

The balance is precarious, and map design lends itself extremely well to such 'cheesemode' tactics. There is no real solution to rooftop camping bar orbital strikes - even modestly competent groups without access to proto are able to drive off an ADS, and orbital strikes are neither readily available nor reliable.

Matchmaking is a tricky beast, I think. There've been numerous efforts to 'fix' it but I'm not sure I've ever been satisfied with it. It seems that overwhelmingly the number of matches I play are one-sided stomps, and those aren't really fun for either team. It's not enjoyable to sit on the redline all match waiting for some newbie to muster the courage to charge your wall of triple damage modded proto weapons. I doubt the newbie is having much fun in that situation either.

I'm not convinced a solution will arrive, though. Perhaps it's rather apt that I'm in a corp and alliance both named Negative Feedback with such an outlook, but this third point, more than anything, has contributed to the break I'm currently taking from the game. But not the forums, because that would be unthinkable.


A true stalwart. o7

I don't think there's any problem with the MD itself. The problem comes when you combine it with specific scenarios, at which point it becomes pretty much uncounterable.

It's quite entertaining playing the bunny hopping character with an MD - I have done it on occasion - but I don't think it's a good mechanic. Jumping up and then freely turning, aiming, and shooting in midair with an MD in such a way that you can ensure hits on your opponent, keep yourself out of harms way, and be prohibitively difficult to successfully hit is not good gameplay.

How do you counter it? The argument I typically hear from supporters is to 'shoot them, they have weak health' but this isn't necessarily true at all. One of my fits (I call it the Dragoon) has somewhere in the region of 800 armour with 20+ HP/s regen but can jump almost as high as a scout. When I jump with this fit the drastic increase in survivability is immediately apparent. I have won numerous solo fights against multiple players simply by jumping around, hammering them while they're mostly unable to respond, and I've even done so on low health.


The other problem is rooftop camping, which is endemic to DUST as a consequence of the map design. Many maps are built in such a way that it's unrealistic to displace rooftop campers at all, even if they have oversight of crucial objectives. When you can sit on a rooftop with lots of HP, you can't be removed easily. Even concerted fire gives you a moment to duck down, regenerate, and start it all over again.

I'm well versed in these things, being a moderately 'competitive' player and having been in well-known tryhard corps for the past couple of years. But I wish I wasn't, really, because I would enjoy DUST if I could have an experience in which I can use both tactics and gungame. Despite being billed as a tactical shooter the most effective tactics are shallow, and absurdly difficult to counter.